Starting at 8 p.m. Sunday, the 34th annual Labor Day fund-raiser for the Muscular Dystrophy Association returns with the serious task of treating and finding a cure for 40 neuromuscular diseases that most tragically ravage the bodies of children.

Love him or hate him -- and it's fair to speculate that even detractors of the slapstick icon tune in just to shake their heads in amazement at his audience-pandering antics -- Lewis is the telethon.

Whether people watch to see a great humanitarian at work or their favorite idiot on display, 75 million in North America are expected to view the 21 1/2-hour extravaganza on television. Millions more will be able to see streaming video on the Internet in the world's first live multilingual Webcast in English, Spanish and Japanese (www.mdausa.org).

May I make a suggestion? Take the time to look very closely at Lewis this holiday weekend on your TV or computer screen. Because every star, no matter how festive in the firmament, eventually burns out.

Lewis may act like he's 9 years old. In reality he's 73 and recovering from a near-fatal attack of viral meningitis, which cut short an August concert tour of Australia.

"When he takes the stage his energy returns," said Jim Brown, director of public affairs for the Muscular Dystrophy Association, of which Lewis is the national chairman. "You see the magic come back. But behind the scenes you see how he struggles.

"I'm sure the TV audience is going to see vintage Jerry, but we'll still have to play it by ear as the show unfolds. He isn't 100 percent yet."

As a recent guest on CNN's Larry King Live, a frank Lewis revealed that he was advised to not be host of the telethon this year because of the risk of another attack.

Lewis: "So I'll establish to the audience I may get the attack. And if I get a bad attack, I'll walk off the stage, I'll get some chicken soup and I'll come back ... I will take care of myself. I'm going to have the best neurologists backstage ..."

King: "Can you do the physical shtick?"

Lewis: "No, I can't do anything physically."

King: "You can't jump around the stage."

Lewis: "No, but I can make noise ..."

In more than 700 broadcast hours since 1966, the annual MDA telethon has raised nearly $1 billion. Try imagining that arduous achievement without Lewis creatively clowning, crying, begging and even bullying viewers for precious pledge money to help his "kids."

Ed McMahon can't. Lewis' longtime traffic cop and second banana on the telethon views the event as inseparable from its star, who is expected to sit on a high stool for much of the show. "But knowing him, he'll be jumping off that stool and getting involved," McMahon said .

And he'll have lots of help. Recalling the golden era of Ed Sullivan and other TV variety shows, the MDA telethon offers audiences a rare opportunity to be entertained by a little bit of everything in one sitting.

"We say, `Look, we're going to entertain the hell out of you. Then we're going to get your money,'" McMahon said. "We can present Ray Charles and a 30-piece orchestra and strike them, and two minutes later bring out an acrobatic team. We're putting on one of the best shows on the air."

Lewis isn't too bad, either.But does anyone really understand him?

Lewis' storied, up-and-down career suggests a perfectionist performer making do in an imperfect show-biz world, a talent tormented by his need to make people laugh and also triumphant because of it.

An eager performer since age 5, Lewis was a high-school dropout (with a genius IQ) struggling as a solo act in New York's Borscht Belt, when he partnered with then-toiling singer Dean Martin in 1946 in Atlantic City. For the next 10 years the duo reigned supreme in movies, radio, television, nightclubs -- and fund-raisers.

The split between Martin and Lewis came with plenty of hard feelings in 1956, although 20 years later the duo would be reunited onstage by Frank Sinatra in a memorable hug on the 1976 Lewis telethon. (Martin died at age 78 in 1995.)

On his own, Lewis continued starring in popular movies, eventually taking on the additional mantles of directing, writing and producing.

Although such visually inventive Lewis films as 1960's The Bell Boy garnered strong European favor, they were ignored or belittled by most critics at home.